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Ancestry.co.uk have added to their collection of occupational records with the release of a collection entitled UK, Register of Duties Paid for Apprentices’ Indentures 1710-1811. The records which make up this collection are from The National Archives (series IR1) and whilst various indexes to these records have been available online previously I believe this is the first time that they have been fully indexed along with images of the registers.

According to the Ancestry website:

This collection contains registers of the money received for the payment on taxes for an apprentice’s indenture between 1710-1811. The registers kept track of the money paid by masters of a trade to have an apprentice. The dates in the records are for when the tax was paid and may be some years after the apprenticeship, not when it started or finished.

The information in each record does differ from across the collection, so earlier records may name the apprentice’s father the later ones don’t. Along with the name of the apprentice you should find the name of the master, their occupation, their location, the length of the apprenticeship, the amount the master was paid and the amount of duty that they had to pay.

One thing that is particularly confusing is the layout of the records, both on Ancestry and in the original registers. On Ancestry each record is covered by two images (or it is on the ones I have looked at) clicking a search result will take you to the first page and then you need to click to the next image to view more details. With the original registers there doesn’t appear to be any headings to the different columns (although I am not sure if this is the same throughout the collection), presumably there is a header at the start of each register, but it takes a bit of work to interpret each record.

For more background on apprenticeship records see The National Archives research guide covering the subject.

So what’s in it for me…

Some initial searches have turned up a few records of interest, however I am sure over time more will emerge. This is one of those collections that will need to be checked again and again, although the lack of detail in some of those records may well make it difficult to identify whether you have the correct individual or not.

One particularly interesting record is for Henry TROWER who was apprenticed to Charles WARD of Henfield, Sussex a carpenter and joiner for 6 years. For this Charles WARD was paid £10, for which he had to pay five shillings duty. This was paid on the 17th June 1766 which means this might be my 5x great-grandfather who was born in 1750.

My Henry TROWER does seem to be the most likely fit given the date but without any more detail it is not possible to say for certain whether this is my ancestor or not.